Training Talk

I'm starting to get really excited to begin incorporating more speed work into my training! Last week's speed work (alternating easy miles and hard miles) felt so good that I decided to do the same thing this week.

1 mile easy*
1 mile hard: 7:19
1 mile easy
1 mile hard: 7:10
0.5 mile easy
0.5 mile hard: 7:04
0.5 mile easy*

*These distances were actually a bit shorter. Probably closer to .8 for the first "mile" and .45 for the last "half mile." I ran from my house to a park where there is a 5k course marked with half mile splits. I used the pavement markings to track my all of my hard distances, so I know those are accurate. This is the life of a runner without a Garmin, try not to be jealous.

I was feeling really good after the second hard mile, so I decided to add an extra half mile push. It was getting dark and I didn't have my headlamp so I didn't have time to add a full extra mile. The weather has been pretty mild the past few days so the course was almost completely dry pavement, a serious improvement over last week's run!

This will be my last speed session before my half marathon on February 22. I will have about a week of down time following this race (to be spent in Florida! Yay!) and then it will be time to get serious about the 5k. I've started drafting a training plan to take me from the beginning of March to early May (10 weeks total).

First rough draft

 I based my training plan on the one found in this Running Times article. I made a few modifications to tailor the plan to my current fitness level, because I 100% know I am not ready to jump into 6 days a week of running! I am hoping to slowly start incorporating a 6th day each week during this training cycle, but not every week and not at the beginning of the plan.